May is National Walking Month. With an election later in the month I'm certainly doing my share of walking! But seriously Living Streets has a useful website about promoting National Walking Month www.livingstreets.org.uk/nwm With Walk to Work week 12-16 May and Walk to School week 19-23 May. Many schools have schemes to incentivise their pupils to be more active and take part. What is your school or place of work doing to encourage walking?
Following the fuss about Pizza Express, it occurs to me that the fairest thing might be to label all meat with its method of slaughter. So anything killed halal would be labelled "throat cut". But we should also label all meat killed by western industrial methods in the same way. Thus: - poultry and pigs on whom gas is used should be labelled "gassed" - poultry and sheep on whom electricity is used should be labelled "electrocuted" - cows on whom stun guns are used should be labelled "bolt through the brain" - and of course any fish you buy ...
There's been a lot of talk recently about Halal meat. If it's an issue you're worried about then please take the time to read these letters from Warrens Butchers and Jaspers which explain what the process actually entails. It's very different to the common media portrayal! This is the message from Jaspers: Jaspers are accredited by the Halal Food Authority (HFA) who do allow stunning to render the animal unconscious prior to slaughter, it does not allow stunning to kill. We are highly regulated by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and an Official Veterinarian who are continually on site through ...
"And... Action!" - Planners give go-ahead for Yate Cinema Planning permission has now been granted for the Yate Cinema and the associated retail development, a decision which has been hanging on a knife edge. The May 8th meeting of a South Glos committee gave the go=ahead after a detailed debate led by Focus Lib Dem councillors Pat Hockey and Alan Lawrence. In the vote that followed the scheme was approved by five votes to nil, the Lib Dems being supported by Labour. The Conservative councillors on the committee felt unable to support the proposal, so they all abstained. This is ...
Twitter is alive with the news that David Watts, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Broxtowe Borough Council, has been chosen as our candidate in the Newark by-election. Michael Crick suggests there were only two applicants. Well, maybe it was a case of quality not quantity, and I wish David all the best in his efforts to take on Ukip's fruitcake emeritus Roger Helmer. And his selection does give me an excuse to remind you that The Kinks' David Watts was a real person and came from Rutland. Take it away boys...
Conservative seat. Resignation The Liberal Democrat candidate is Stephen Court. Contact: Cllr Neil Morrison (neil.morrison@fenlandlibdems.org.uk)
[IMG: European Flag] Liberal Democrat MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber Edward McMilan-Scott, who is also the European Parliament's Vice President for Human Rights, has been writing in the Yorkshire Post about the contest between the values of the EU and those of Vladimir Putin. The EU is built on democracy and liberal values while Putin seeks to build a Eurasian alliance built on homophobia and nationalism. To understand what is happening in the Ukraine, we have to know something of President Putin's Eurasian dream that is steering events. This involves the establishment of a post-Soviet Russian empire and the ...
There has been a recent incident of a sales person contacting residents in Hinxton this week to offer security products at a reduced or heavily discounted rate. These sales people have periodically visited Cambridgeshire to sell alarm and security products to homeowners; making misleading claims such as you can buy an alarm for just £1; or staying in the person's home for a great length of time to get them to sign up for a security system. These techniques are illegal and the companies involved have been advised by colleagues at Cambridgeshire Trading Standards as to the correct business practice ...
With just two weeks until voters go to the polls in the European elections, the Liberal Democrats are the only party standing up to UKIP and fighting to keep Britain in the EU. Writing in the Huffington Post today, Liberal Democrat Party President Tim Farron brands Eurosceptics as "UKIP-lite" on Europe. In the article Tim makes the case for Britain's place in the EU and why Liberal Democrats are fighting to keep Britain IN. In the European elections our country faces a stark choice between those arguing to stay in Europe and those who want to leave. Liberal Democrats are ...
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/27283607 The BBC has the story Let's hope for greater success for our leading Sefton football club next season but can a part-time club really make it back into the Football League? [IMG: untitled]
IN or OUT? The Liberal Democrats are the only party prepared to make the case for Britain remaining in the EU. While the Liberal Democrats are fighting to protect millions of British jobs linked to trade with the EU, the Tories are openly flirting with exit, a move which would put these jobs at risk. When it comes to the debate about whether Britain should be IN or OUT of Europe, it is clear what British businesses want and that is to remain in the EU. But unlike these major players, there are a number of Tories who want to ...
Thu 8th
19:29
Former Tory candidate urges Haringey residents to vote Liberal Democrat in local elections
[IMG: Haringey's special roundabout] Labour's record in running the Council in Haringey is not what you would call impressive. Despite charging the fifth highest Council Tax in the City, the Audit Commission marked it as the worst in London. Despite massively overspending its schools budget, its primaries schools were described as "the worst and going backwards" and they send folk off on luxury yacht trips at taxpayers' expense. £9,000 Haringey taxpayers' bill for luxury yacht trip – bad enough but cost trebled on what Haringey first claimed! pic.twitter.com/5aDh49QUtw — Lynne Featherstone (@lfeatherstone) March 30, 2014 As if that wasn't enough ...
On Monday the Guardian headlined its article on the attempted take-over of AstraZeneca by Pfizer as: "Coalition rift over £69bn offer fro UK drugs company." I find it sad that even the so-called responsible press describe reasonable differences between the coalition partners in the language of strife. Even single parties are, in the classic phrase, "coalitions of opinion" so it is reasonable to expect that when two or more parties form the government the differences of opinions will be wider. Grow up, Guardian, and report our democracy as working as R A Butler correctly described it: "Government by discussion." There ...
John Pugh has written an excellent posting for Lib Dem Voice and Stephen Hesketh (also of this parish) has added some important thoughts. John and I had a discussion at the weekend about this-and how it should impact on our leaflets. I went away thinking of doing a blog posting and had in my mind a quote from Jo Grimond which I have now found. 'The salient feature of British politics is not the conflict of class and class or Tory and Liberal and Labour, though these conflicts exist, it is the conflict between the government and the governed. Part ...
Southport Online News has the story, pictures and video. With thanks to Cllr. John Dodd for this posting.
The British economy is improving and it's also worth remembering all the achievements the Lib Dems have succeeded in making, in spite of being in coalition with the Tories. Click here for a full list but here are a few highlights: Raising the tax threshold means that 25.4 million people will receive a tax cut of £800 1.5m apprenticeships have been created since 2010 – that's 78% more than in the same period under Labour The pupil premium is giving an extra £1300 a year for each eligible primary school pupil and £935 for each eligible secondary school pupil The ...
Thu 8th
16:20Battle of the Election Videos: Lib Dems' "Incredible Silent Man" v. "Labour's Un-credible Shrinking ...
So Labour's party election broadcast then... Titled The Un-credible Shrinking Man it mocks Nick Clegg as a deluded patsy of the posho Tories. He starts off being offered a biscuit and ends up being chased across the cabinet table by a big cat. Because he's shrunk, y'see. And naked. I'm not sure I'm doing its nuanced subtlety justice. It's sort-of funny, at least if you enjoy laughing at one-dimensional caricatures which fit your pre-existing bias – a bit like a sketch for Radio 4′s The Now Show. You can watch it for yourselves here. Kudos to the Lib Dem team ...
My heating engineer is voting for Ukip, the United Kingdom Independence Party, the reactionary insurgent English political party. This party has hit the zeitgeist, even here in cosmopolitan London. Political activists from other parties seem to have no idea how to handle this. This should give us pause, especially in the Liberal Democrats. The party needs to rediscover its anti-establishment roots. The typical reaction to Ukip from political insiders is annoyance. This party breaks almost every rule of political correctness. My Facebook account is bombarded by posts pointing out the various unsavoury views held by Ukip candidates, and denouncing them ...
Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian prime minister and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party nominee for the presidency of the European Commission, joined the three other main contenders for the job — Jean-Claude Juncker (European People's Party), Martin Schultz (Party of European Socialists) and Ska Keller (European Green Party) — for the first ever televised debate between Commission presidency candidates. You can watch a video of the debate, which was hosted by Euro News, below:
A panel of world scientists want to talk to us about synthetic biology. But it's not clear what we're allowed to discuss The Inter-Academy Panel, a network of the worlds science academies including our own Royal Society, today issued a statement on synthetic biology. A few years ago, biologists in the higher branches of the Royal Society would claim that SynBio didn't merit attention it was seen as either rebranded molecular biology or messy, dysfunctional engineering. Now, these institutions have woken up to its novelty not because of the science, but because of a set of concerns about regulation. The ...
A very sensible move: From today The National Archives will begin to archive tweets and You Tube videos published by UK central government departments from their official Twitter and YouTube social media platforms. This marks the culmination of a complex technical project to capture social media into the UK Government Web Archive and permanently preserve it as the official public record.
In the early minutes of Sunday morning I was laying in bed and doing what I often do, I leaned over and picked up the iPad to look something up and my internet wasn't working. So I got out of bed and rebooted the modem. I got back into bed and the internet still wasn't working. Cue panic. Mass panic. The next four hours (remember I had already gone to bed before this has all started) were spent trying to work out what was stopping my internet from working. You see I'm kinda, ever so slightly, you know, possibly, at ...
Both of Acocks Green's Neighbourhood Forums have met in the last week. The Acocks Green Neighbourhood Forum (which covers the area to the north of the Warwick Road) met on Tuesday last week and the Fox Hollies Green Neighbourhood Forum (which covers the area to the south of the Warwick Road) met last night. The Acocks Green Neighbourhood Forum had presentations from: 1) Fleet and Waste Management/Environmental Health (respectively Noel Delaney and Kate Careford). They covered the work being done to tackle litter on the Yardley Road. They explained that several businesses in the area did not have commercial waste ...
Nick Clegg is quite right to oppose automatic six month sentences for anyone caught carrying an illegal knife for the second time. All sentences which ignore the individual circumstances of the offence, the offender and the victim are wrong. This Tory proposal will no doubt also be adopted by Labour, who seem to be unable to come up with a single policy idea of their own. What Nick Clegg did not say is that knife crimes should be treated more leniently than they are at the moment. He didn't say that he was opposed to a stricter set of sentencing ...
[IMG: Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant - Some rights reserved by John O Dyer] Following the vote at last September's conference, the party now supports new-build nuclear power. This has been a hard road for many, but ultimately the UK needs to replace the 82% of UK nuclear generation capacity that is due to decommission by 2023. This is fully 51% of all UK low-carbon generating capacity, and unlike renewables today, nuclear can provide baseload generation. It is this combination of baseload capability, capacity at lower cost than the cheapest renewables means that nuclear new build should go ahead. But nuclear ...
This coming Sunday 11 May is the Dulwich Festival Goose Green Fair from 11am to 430pm. The East Dulwich Secondary School Campaign will have a gazebo there. The campaign steering group will be there along with Habderdashers' Aske's Federation staff and some of their year 9 prefects as ambassadors. I really hope you can come along and say hi, ask searching questions about what we and Haberdashers are proposing, and how that fits with your expectations for a great new school to join the area's other great schools. And if anyone can help us make this happen please do get ...
As part of my work as the party's new Pastoral Care Officer I would like the views of the party's councillors, political assistants and staff. I would appreciate it if you could take the time to complete this short online survey by 7 June 2014. It should only take approximately 10 minutes to complete the questionnaire [...]
I am currently in Mozambique, on a visit in my role as minister for international development. Here's my first blog from the visit, also available here... Nothing can quite prepare you for walking into Zimpeto market, the largest wholesale market in Mozambique. It is a hive of activity, colour and noise with stacks of fruit and vegetables piled high in great walls of produce. It is also the workplace of some industrious female market traders who have established small businesses importing goods from South Africa to sell. [IMG: Photo: Lynne Featherstone meeting the market traders in Zimpeto, Mozambique] These feisty ...
[IMG: LABBRO-SKRINK_2903998b] So most of you will have seen the Labour Party's party political broadcast last night. If you haven't, here it is. If you don't want to waste four minutes of your life, I'll summarise it for you: it's four minutes of Clegg bashing with a scintilla of ineffectual painting-the-Tories-as-moronic-toffs crap. Last night, as I watched it, I mused that poli sci students may one day point to this PPB and say that this was the moment the Labour Party jumped the shark. Lest you think this is just the wailings of some offended Lib Dem, there is an ...
It's rare to read anything too attention grabbing in my law textbooks. However, in the amongst my employment law textbook's rather dry description of the course of actions available to wronged employees was this rather striking case: Employers could, until 2003, be liable for the acts of a person who was not an employee. In [...]
Here are the Liberal Democrat entries in the top 100 political blogs as ranked by EBuzzing. Not much change this month, with Ming Campbell dropping out and no new entrants. 1 (5) Liberal Democrat Voice Down 1 2 (17) Mark Pack Up 8 3 (24) Stephen Tall Up 2 4 (36) Jennie Rigg Up 12 5 (45) Lynne Featherstone MP Down 4 6 (53) Paul Walter (Liberal Burblings) Up 5 7 (56) Alex Marsh Up 21 8 (60) Zoe O'Connell (Complicity) No change 9 (63) Richard Morris (A View from Ham Common) Up 1 10 (77) Steve Beasant Up 10 ...
Two months ago in preparation for an appearance on the 'Law in Action' programme on Radio 4 my colleagues and I did a survey at our regular open air advice centre at the Farmer's Market in Allerton Road. Of 117 ... Continue reading →
[IMG: Sundays] After yet another mad dash with the family around the shops last Sunday afternoon I read with great interest that members of the All Party Parliamentary Retail Group have recently tabled amendments to the Deregulation Bill currently going through Parliament to remove restrictions on Sunday trading and the launch of a new consumer-led campaign group to lobby MP's to support these proposals. Introduced in 1994, the limited Sunday opening hours for shops over 280 square metres were designed to protect local convenience shops from the bigger supermarkets. Fast forward 20 years with the major supermarkets now also dominating ...
Thu 8th
10:18
If the Tories in Portsmouth can only find criticism in a 'typo' on a leaflet: then they must be runn...
via Facebook
Thu 8th
10:18If the Tories in Portsmouth can only find criticism in a 'typo' on a leaflet: then they must be runn...
May 08, 2014 at 10:17AM via Facebook
Why do scientists study animal penises more than vaginas? A variety of reasons, but "it's easier" is the most depressing one. I thought science WANTED to unravel complex things? :/ (tags: ) Christian Extremist group to protect Nigel Farage on Campaign Trail (tags: ) How to look & feel great at 85? "masturbation, pot and raw garlic" apparently "masturbation, pot and raw garlic" (tags: ) What on earth is mindfulness? Looks like snake oil to me. (tags: ) Is The Internet Intrinsically Sexist? (tags: ) This Response to That Princeton Freshman Should Be Required Reading for White Males (tags: ) ...
In my last column I wrote about the shocking and ongoing waste of taxpayers' money by Labour-run Haringey Council. Many local residents have contacted me in response, expressing their dismay at the money spent on trips to Cannes and on bonuses - especially at a time when local Labour continuously complain about a lack of funds! But I know that criticising local Labour isn't enough to boot them out of power here. That's why I am so delighted with the Haringey Liberal Democrats' positive six point plan for our borough, which they have put forward in the run up to ...
I had been editing earlier posts with updates, but that was getting confusing so here is the latest as of 8th May that I know of: On the topic of what IHP are saying publicly, they clarified their earlier email as follows: These changes apply worldwide. Visa do not want us shipping prescription meds – they do not agree with it. In terms of what they are actually doing, this is more complicated. I have heard from numerous people who ordered from IHP over the weekend using a credit or debit card, were not asked for a prescription at the ...
A report to go before the Policy & Resources Cabinet Board today reveals that over £1m of council taxpayers' money is still tied up in Iceland. The Icelandic Bank scandal broke in October 2008. Labour-dominated Neath Port Talbot council had put at risk £20m, the highest in Wales, and among the highest in the UK. Almost 95% of this has been recovered, thanks largely to efforts by the Local Government Association, but the amount lost in interest is incalculable, though clearly dwarfed by the fees paid to accountancy firms involved in the recovery.
[IMG: con home cartoon] Here's my latest The Other Side column for ConservativeHome, published here on Tuesday. This week, as the football season draws to a close, I kick some fantasy politics around, imagining a world without the existing parties. My thanks as ever to the site's editors, Paul Goodman and Mark Wallace, for giving a Lib Dem space to provoke – constructively, I hope. It's the last full week of the football season. 'Tall's Talents', my fantasy team, currently languishes in position number 469,197 in the English league. I've had something of a Man Utd season. Time to return ...
[IMG: Police motorbike - Some rights reserved by Metropolitan Police] On Monday, I wrote about the reported Coalition tension over Tory plans to bring in mandatory 6 month jail sentences for carrying a knife. I said that: It's important that Liberal Democrats stay in this debate and make the evidence-based case. Nobody else will do it for us. We may not be able to stop a bad law being passed, but we need to oppose it calmly, clearly and without rancour. I would not suggest for a minute that the two events are in any way related, but Nick Clegg ...
Constituents have complained to me regarding the poor road surface on Wright Avenue - the road that leads to the Riverside Nature Park and the Civic Amenity Centre. I raised this with the City Engineer who has responded as follows:Wright Avenue is now wholly maintained by the Road Maintenance Partnership and is part adopted and part non adopted Council asset (the adopted section shown in blue on the plan below).Orders were raised to repair a number of potholes from Riverside Avenue to the skips with a timescale for completion of within twenty eight days.Originally it was planned to have the ...
Thu 8th
08:30
Diesel engine pollution – Find a solution before Bootle becomes a particulates black spot!
The Guardian has the story. It is precisely this sort of concern that I have about the management of transport access to the enlarged Seaforth Docks in Bootle. My postings of 24th April and 2nd May provide more background to this issue. I don't think anyone wants to stop the economic benefits of the expansion of the docks in Bootle but if the transport corridor (A5036 – Dunnings Bridge Road, Church Road, Princess Way) from Switch Island to the docks is going to become a sea of lorries churning out diesel fums and particulates then some serious thinking needs ...
Sale of Children's Books Thursday 15th May between 6.30pm and 7.30pm Victoria Park Primary SchoolJunction of Blackness Road and Glenagnes RoadDundee DD2 2AB Hundreds of nearly new children's books for sale;Picture books, Primary age and Teen FictionAll recently published.Paperbacks £1, Hardbacks £2. This is the annual book sale of the Dundee and Area Children's Book Group which tests books for the Red House Children's Book Award.
Around 30 Gatley residents and traders met at Roasted on Silverdale Road on Wednesday night to brainstorm about ways to improve the village. The evening was expertly organised by the Gatley Village Partnership and I was there as resident and councillor to help out. The aim of the evening was to come up with deliverable projects rather than optimistic wish-lists and there were a lot of great ideas from the three tables (roughly speaking, people looking at shops, the environment and special events). Among the traders there's interest in pursuing a loyalty card scheme to reward Gatley residents for shopping ...
... on escaping relegation from the Premier League with their 2-0 win over WBA last night (excepting all bar the freakiest possible set of results this weekend of course). Looking back at what I wrote earlier on in the season, their success is an excellent demonstration of why I will never be a football pundit.
We are all used to hypocrisy from UKIP but the latest example takes it to a new height. After it transpired that despite their rhetoric regarding immigrants taking British jobs, most UKIP MEPs were employing non-British nationals, it has been discovered that the party are happy to extend that dispensation into other areas of their work. The Independent report that the company used by UKIP to distribute party literature employs mostly workers who are originally from Eastern Europe and have moved to Britain in search of work: MPs from UKIPs opposition parties have spoken out against the irony of a ...
The Welsh Labour Government has "no answers" over widening health inequalities in Wales. Figures seen by the Welsh Liberal Democrats show that inequalities in key indicators, such as low birth weights and cancer incidence rates, have worsened since the current Welsh Labour Government came into power in 2011. The figures show that parts of the First Minister's own Bridgend constituency has a death rate over five times higher than parts of Ceredigion, and in parts of Cardiff a baby is over 26 times more likely to be born underweight than in parts of Wrexham. I challenged the First Minister on ...
This is a full transcript of the speech to be given by Fiyaz Mughal OBE at the TELL MAMA annual fundraising dinner on countering anti-Muslim prejudice and hate: "Secretary of State, Minister of State, Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for attending our second annual fundraising dinner for the TELL MAMA project. The core principles of the TELL MAMA project include measuring, mapping and monitoring anti-Muslim incidents both off-line and on-line. Our work also involves supporting victims of anti-Muslim hate and ensuring access to justice by ensuring that police forces have relevant evidence and statements from victims of anti-Muslim hate ...
